Family drama turns to bonkers body horror so gradually you hardly notice.

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A glowing purple meteorite makes life, uh, difficult and gross for an isolated farm family after it crashes in their yard in the new film Color Out of Space. Because the family's patriarch is played by human-TNT hybrid Nicolas Cage and the director is Richard Stanley—who hasn't made a narrative feature since 1996's The Island of Doctor Moreau went so ass-over-teakettle that a whole documentary is devoted to its disaster-ness—you might not expect Color to be an exercise in subtlety. It is not a movie encumbered by "good taste" and does not feel like it was ever brought up in a boardroom full of suits who wanted to make sure it would "play for all demographics" in "all markets."

Yet Color's first half, before everything succumbs to glorious madness while Nic Cage does what we pay him to do, is a surprisingly effective look at a family trying to keep things together.

Something nasty's in the woodshed well in the trailer for Color Out of Space.

WHY AREN'T THERE MORE LOVECRAFT MOVIES?

Part of the challenge of adapting H.P. Lovecraft into a feature-length film is that he doesn't write about people doing things. His "protagonists," if we can even call them that, are often featureless men with bland names passively observing an eldritch, blasphemous, squamous, cyclopean horror that is too evil to fully describe (say "eldritch," "blasphemous," "squamous," and "cyclopean" out loud—don't they feel great in your mouth?). His characters are not driven by desires or choices so much as they are survivor-witnesses to the unnameable. We can't imagine any of them having hobbies or wearing sweatpants. It's hard to make movies about things "just happening" to people.

(One exception is the trashterpiece Reanimator, based on Lovecraft's schlock Frankenstein-knockoff, "Herbert West, Reanimator"—what a gloriously clunky title—which is one of the few times Lovecraft creates an actual protagonist who affects the world around him.)

CONTINUES BELOW

This new film is based on the short story "The Colour Out of Space" by H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), whose short stories often feature rural families becoming isolated, inbred, degenerate, or cannibals. Oh, or turning into fish-people. In Stanley's film, the family's isolation is more emotional than physical. Mom (Joely Richardson) is a workaholic recovering from a mastectomy. The daughter (Madeleine Arthur) dabbles in the occult. The teenage son (Brendan Meyer) smokes doobies behind the barn. And the younger son (Julian Hilliard) eventually makes friends with a disembodied voice coming out of the well. See, America, this is what happens when your town doesn't have a nearby Blockbuster.

Meanwhile, Dad (Cage) insists that everything is going to be fine, just fine. More than 30 years have passed since Moonstruck and Raising Arizona so, at this point, Cage is a known quantity. You know you're going to get a variation of his pathetic-yet-relatable persona, this time as a guy who thinks he can will his family into contentment with enough forced smiles. And then the meteorite gets in their water, Dad bizarrely overshares with a local TV reporter, and the family's unresolved issues become something more gruesome...

Like so many first-rate B-horror movies, the supernatural seems to have a vague, can't-quite-put-your-finger-on-it thematic connection to its characters' existing issues. Is the supernatural a manifestation of the family's troubled id? Are the cosmos punishing Mom and Dad for their unresolved animosity? Would this have happened if Dad was actually good at farming? The relationship between the family's problems and the horror that gradually unfolds isn't 1:1, but it wouldn't happen to a healthy family either.

WHY AREN'T THERE MORE LOVECRAFT MOVIES? (CONT.)

This lack of strong characters is intentional. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos—of crazed gods with octopus heads lurking at the heart of time and space—isn't a coherent theology. Whereas science and most religions promise that knowing the truth of the cosmos will bring us joy and freedom and wax our Toyotas, Cthulhu embodies the gnawing fear that knowledge brings madness and our only hope is to keep our heads down until we die a peaceful death in our sleep. There's not some other world out there where everything's gonna be OK, Lovecraft says, there's just this rock. So a mythology in which nondescript humans are pulled inevitably along by giant, monstrous forces is no accident.

Also, Lovecraft is hard to adapt because he was super-racist. Like, even other racists at the time would say, "Jesus, dude, chill."

I know that, when it comes to what, precisely, is besetting the family, I'm being cagey. (Get it? Cage-y? I deserve a raise.) But do you really need any more plot summary than that? Director Stanley is roughly a contemporary of horror legend John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing), and like Carpenter, his direction is clean and uncluttered, which is what material this batty calls for. He favors wide shots, a moderate pace, and mounting dread over quick cutting and jump scares. (Oh yeet, Color composer Colin Stetson worked on Hereditary!!!)

About the showiest thing Stanley does is to not give us a clear look at some of the ew, nasty elements, which is itself a visualization of Lovecraft's frequent reluctance to have his characters directly interact with the supernatural. Locations like Arkham and Miskatonic University—which are to Lovecraft what Yoknapatawpha is to Faulkner—are mentioned offhandedly and not in an inorganic, fanservice-y kind of way.

Between the twin manias of Cage and the paranormal, the supporting players know that the best they can do is anchor the viewer with straightforward performances that aren't any more complicated than they need to be. Our audience surrogate is a hydrologist (Elliot Knight playing "Ward Phillips," i.e., "Howard Phillips Lovecraft") surveying the groundwater. He only has about 1.5 expressions because that's all he needs; he even looks a little bit like Duane Jones, who similarly played the voice of reason in Night of the Living Dead, another B-movie that favors unfussy performances.

Color Out of Space passes off its Portuguese locations for the New England that Lovecraft loved/terrorized, but more importantly, the farm and its surroundings feel real. Compare Color to, say, The Conjuring or The Haunting of Hill House or Doctor Sleep: every location in those productions has a "digital jiggle," i.e., every shadow or beam of sunlight looks "punched up," every face has a vague, unnatural sheen, and every horizon has the "too-perfect" look of a digital touch-up that removed powerlines. We can tolerate that in The Irishman, but not so much in a horror movie that requires us to start out believing what we see.

As for when Color really calls on its special effects—well, who cares how realistic they are? We're seeing the world through the eyes of people who've been guzzling tainted drinking water.

Although Color Out of Space opens this weekend in the United States, Stanley says the company behind the movie has already green-lit him to helm two more Lovecraft adaptations. He'll start with The Dunwich Horror, in which a weirdo kid and his mom keep something even less human than he is locked in the barn. Good stuff.

113 Reader Comments

There is one Lovecraft story that does feature some characters doing things, and is also truly awesome in its scope: The Dunwich Horror. In the hands of the right director, with a good cast, that story has potential. I’d love to see someone give it a shot.

There is one Lovecraft story that does feature some characters doing things, and is also truly awesome in its scope: The Dunwich Horror. In the hands of the right director, with a good cast, that story has potential. I’d love to see someone give it a shot.

Sounds like you're in luck!

Quote:

Although Color Out of Space opens this weekend in the United States, Stanley says the company behind the movie has already green-lit him to helm two more Lovecraft adaptations. He'll start with The Dunwich Horror, in which a weirdo kid and his mom keep something even less human than he is locked in the barn. Good stuff.

There is one Lovecraft story that does feature some characters doing things, and is also truly awesome in its scope: The Dunwich Horror. In the hands of the right director, with a good cast, that story has potential. I’d love to see someone give it a shot.

Sounds like you're in luck!

Quote:

Although Color Out of Space opens this weekend in the United States, Stanley says the company behind the movie has already green-lit him to helm two more Lovecraft adaptations. He'll start with The Dunwich Horror, in which a weirdo kid and his mom keep something even less human than he is locked in the barn. Good stuff.

This was a very positive surprise for me personally. I'm all for having more Lovecraft on the screen, but Nicolas Cage... his output hasn't exactly been stellar lately.

It's not a 1:1 adaptation by any means, "inspired by" would be more apt. But I really enjoyed it, the atmosphere is still quite "Lovecraftian". And bonus points for the hippie hermit being played by Tommy Chong.

Mark Jenkins at NPR was significantly less than lukewarm about it. I'm personally not a fan of Cage. How would you say this version compares to The Curse? As to looking real: from the images, maybe they should have kept the violet a little more subtle? I'm unspeakably grateful that there's a movie not shot against a greenscreen for once, but then there's all that overwhelming purp everywhere.

There is one Lovecraft story that does feature some characters doing things, and is also truly awesome in its scope: The Dunwich Horror. In the hands of the right director, with a good cast, that story has potential. I’d love to see someone give it a shot.

As it happens, I got both volumes of Gou Tanabe's manga adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness for Christmas, and those were a visual feast befitting Lovecraft's cosmic horror, despite having to streamline the narrative and characters significantly. I know It/The Thing/Who Goes There? has been done to death by now, but I feel there's room for a film version of this story too. Admittedly you'd have to invent the characters for the names almost out of whole cloth because, like Peter said, Lovecraft didn't really do characters. Humans are in his stories only to suddenly witness the horror under-girding reality that they normally don't.

This was a very positive surprise for me personally. I'm all for having more Lovecraft on the screen, but Nicolas Cage... his output hasn't exactly been stellar lately.

It's not a 1:1 adaptation by any means, "inspired by" would be more apt. But I really enjoyed it, the atmosphere is still quite "Lovecraftian". And bonus points for the hippie hermit being played by Tommy Chong.

I haven't seen many of his million or so movies he's done since his money was stolen or whatever happened, but I'm pretty convinced it's not entirely his fault he's awalking punchline now. He has serious acting chops, but he needs good directing. Also he has done like every movie he can, becaude of the money thing. IIRC.

EDIT: Also I'm apperntly one of the fewpeople who actually like The Island of Dr Moreau.

Fun fact about Richard Stanley: when he got fired from Moreau, he was told to leave but they later discovered he had never actually gotten on the plane. The crew found him weeks later in the jungle, where he had just been living on his own. They eventually snuck him back on set in costume, and he’s in the final cut of the movie as a background extra.

This is exactly the type of man I want to see directing a Lovecraft adaptation.

There is one Lovecraft story that does feature some characters doing things, and is also truly awesome in its scope: The Dunwich Horror. In the hands of the right director, with a good cast, that story has potential. I’d love to see someone give it a shot.

As it happens, I got both volumes of Gou Tanabe's manga adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness for Christmas, and those were a visual feast befitting Lovecraft's cosmic horror, despite having to streamline the narrative and characters significantly. I know It/The Thing/Who Goes There? has been done to death by now, but I feel there's room for a film version of this story too. Admittedly you'd have to invent the characters for the names almost out of whole cloth because, like Peter said, Lovecraft didn't really do characters. Humans are in his stories only to suddenly witness the horror under-girding reality that they normally don't.

That's an interesting coincidence, I too just finished a few of Gou Tanabe's adaptions as well, though for me one of them was in fact The Colour Out Of Space (it's 6 chapters there). I agree with your assessment, and perhaps a drawn medium is a much easier match for a visual Lovecraft adaption. It's a lot easier to to really get into overlaying and compositing the everyday with the surreal, the creeping sense of wrongness and inevitable doom but without just cheap gore either. Lovecraft's works were horror but often much based around conveying a feeling of "surface of something beyond human comprehension" as well. Like writing, with artwork there is a uniform cost no matter the setting or effect, the cost is only in how much detail to go into. Live action gets more expensive the farther from reality it drifts.

I thought they would do the whole "black and white movie with color" thing like in the past. I always thought that was a clever way of doing the scenario.

Otherwise, maybe they should have tried having people see Stygian Blue or something similar.

Agreed that a monochrome (or maybe even sepia/washed out) with color would be a way to convey the "impossible color" of something other worldly. I don't know if chimerical colors like Self-Luminous Red/Hyperbolic Orange/Sygian Blue are actually possible to do in a film though since it depends on using a strong color template to specifically fatigue some of the eye's cone cells and thus alter the typical response. Though it'd be an interesting thing to try to pull off in film, having something be a pure unichromatic fatigue color and then swap it in pulses. Wouldn't be continuously chimerical but from time to time. Might be too distracting though? Laser projectors might be another approach, if the whole film is done normally but coherent single light used just for highlight the Other it could look unusual. Some sort of constantly shifting rainbow effect too maybe?

Alternately, I wonder if any film has ever tried the inverse: a completely normal full color film, but with some aspect being monochrome, a void of color no matter what the light around it was.

Looks like we've already had a robust discussion of how purple doesn't look that impressive in the stills.

Though I guess simply divorcing yourself from the text of the story and what is implied to be a psychic projection of substance interpreted as unnameable color, any arbitrary color could be used to convey a sense of contamination. Its "The Colour Out of Space" after all, not "The Impossible Colour".

Of course, the NPR review made it sound like everyone treats it as an impossible color, in which case, sounds like there's some dumb dialog floating around in there.

Are we really faulting a movie for being unable to accurately present a color "unlike any of the normal spectrum [..] almost impossible to describe [..] only by analogy that they called it colour at all." ?

Are we really faulting a movie for being unable to accurately present a color "unlike any of the normal spectrum [..] almost impossible to describe [..] only by analogy that they called it colour at all." ?

This is the year 2020! We've got 3D movies about blue furries riding sky whales fighting spezz murreens as one of the all-time-box-office-draws in our collective rear-view mirror! Heck right I want brand new colors on screen!

Damn, almost the only story that does not follow the Lovecraftian tradition of helpless humans just witnessing and suffering from supernatural horrors is the Dunwich horror. Lovecraft himself said in his correspondence that it is not true supernatural horror story because the humans have a way of fighting back against the horror and therefore is not kind of story he normally writes. I wish they had picked some other story like the Whisperer in the darkness or At the mountains of madness for the next film. The dunwhich horror feels almost like a parody of the other Lovecraftian stories.

Fun fact about Richard Stanley: when he got fired from Moreau, he was told to leave but they later discovered he had never actually gotten on the plane. The crew found him weeks later in the jungle, where he had just been living on his own. They eventually snuck him back on set in costume, and he’s in the final cut of the movie as a background extra.

This is exactly the type of man I want to see directing a Lovecraft adaptation.

My girlfriend and I saw it last night, I walked out simultaneously loving it and hating it. Compared to his Mandy performance, some of the classic Cage over-acting was jarring in places. Like a couple of times he slips into what is clearly an exaggerated, Colbert-esque Trump impression. Everyone else in the cast clearly drank the same tainted acting well water - I dare you to keep a straight face when either of the elder kids talk about alpacas, or Joely Richardson talks about work.

Other than the acting, it’s beautifully shot and the pacing of the descent into madness worked for me. I can’t wait to see how Stanley adapts other books in the mythos.

Looks like we've already had a robust discussion of how purple doesn't look that impressive in the stills.

Though I guess simply divorcing yourself from the text of the story and what is implied to be a psychic projection of substance interpreted as unnameable color, any arbitrary color could be used to convey a sense of contamination. Its "The Colour Out of Space" after all, not "The Impossible Colour".

Of course, the NPR review made it sound like everyone treats it as an impossible color, in which case, sounds like there's some dumb dialog floating around in there.

It's true that purple isn't a spectral color; purple is not violet. Purple is a color created by our brains that doesn't live on the electromagnetic spectrum. I suspect whatever is being discussed has its roots there.

Are we really faulting a movie for being unable to accurately present a color "unlike any of the normal spectrum [..] almost impossible to describe [..] only by analogy that they called it colour at all." ?

Problem is there is no such thing, that isn’t how waves work. It’s one reason why Lovecraft isn’t as smart as his fans like to think. Just like the ‘Horror of non-Euclidean geometry’ makes zero sense to anyone who actually understands what non-Euclidean even means (geometry on a sphere, you know like we deal with daily living on a globe). The guy was actually pretty scientifically and mathematically illiterate on top of being an insane racist.

Non Euclidean geometry doesn't have to be anything horrifying. But if you pushed the curvature high enough it absolutely would be terrifying. In fact that's a common horror trope - mazes which you cannot escape because they map onto themselves for example, or more subtly break our expectations - such as the examples documented in the set design of the Overlook hotel.

I found a compendium from Lovecraft at a Half-Price books last year, and I’ve been trying to make my way though it.

It really is telling A just how racist he was and B how similar all his work is.

Yes, he’s incredibly influential on works of horror, but if you try to read too much at once it turns into stereo instructions.

The dream cycle is a good change of pace. E.g. The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, Silver Key, etc. There is a little more protagonist action there too (or room to fit it without breaking the story).

I have to admit that, as much as I enjoy his writing, this movie doesn't have much appeal to me. A lot of what is great about Lovecraft is the descriptive writing and his crazy vocabulary isn't going to translate to the screen. Better for a radio show. And personally, I find Cage's characters all end up too similar, which I guess is the same criticism you apply to Lovecraft's writing...

Looks like we've already had a robust discussion of how purple doesn't look that impressive in the stills.

Though I guess simply divorcing yourself from the text of the story and what is implied to be a psychic projection of substance interpreted as unnameable color, any arbitrary color could be used to convey a sense of contamination. Its "The Colour Out of Space" after all, not "The Impossible Colour".

Of course, the NPR review made it sound like everyone treats it as an impossible color, in which case, sounds like there's some dumb dialog floating around in there.

It's true that purple isn't a spectral color; purple is not violet. Purple is a color created by our brains that doesn't live on the electromagnetic spectrum. I suspect whatever is being discussed has its roots there.

Purple light doesn't exist - as a single wavelength - so there's no purple in a rainbow. When a mixture of red and blue light hits your eye, your eye sees that as purple. So an object can still be purple if it absorbs green light and reflects both red and blue light. A lot of colors are our brain mixing specific wavelengths together. So saying it doesn’t exist is based on a misunderstanding of how out brain “observes” color.

Purple exists because it exits in out brains. A lot of colors only exist in our brains. You can buy a purple sapphire, because our brains see purple when we look at it in daylight.

You might as well say white doesn’t exist because it’s an assemblage of all colors that our brain responds to as white.

Lovecraft was a racist of such proportions I can’t imagine paying money for anything he touched. Even though he’s been dead for decades. But I suppose that is part of the appeal of horror work such as this? Like not being able to look away from a car crash.

Looks like we've already had a robust discussion of how purple doesn't look that impressive in the stills.

Though I guess simply divorcing yourself from the text of the story and what is implied to be a psychic projection of substance interpreted as unnameable color, any arbitrary color could be used to convey a sense of contamination. Its "The Colour Out of Space" after all, not "The Impossible Colour".

Of course, the NPR review made it sound like everyone treats it as an impossible color, in which case, sounds like there's some dumb dialog floating around in there.

It's true that purple isn't a spectral color; purple is not violet. Purple is a color created by our brains that doesn't live on the electromagnetic spectrum. I suspect whatever is being discussed has its roots there.

Purple light doesn't exist - as a single wavelength - so there's no purple in a rainbow. When a mixture of red and blue light hits your eye, your eye sees that as purple. So an object can still be purple if it absorbs green light and reflects both red and blue light. A lot of colors are our brain mixing specific wavelengths together. So saying it doesn’t exist is based on a misunderstanding of how out brain “observes” color.

Purple exists because it exits in out brains. A lot of colors only exist in our brains. You can buy a purple sapphire, because our brains see purple when we look at it in daylight.

You might as well say white doesn’t exist because it’s an assemblage of all colors that our brain responds to as white.

Lovecraft was a racist of such proportions I can’t imagine paying money for anything he touched. Even though he’s been dead for decades. But I suppose that is part of the appeal of horror work such as this? Like not being able to look away from a car crash.

I've never much cared for Lovecraft's writing. There's no variety in it, and it's stiflingly cluttered.

On the color thing, yes, that's pretty much what I was saying. Just speculating on how any Internet conflagrations might have gotten started.

I found a compendium from Lovecraft at a Half-Price books last year, and I’ve been trying to make my way though it.

It really is telling A just how racist he was and B how similar all his work is.

Yes, he’s incredibly influential on works of horror, but if you try to read too much at once it turns into stereo instructions.

The dream cycle is a good change of pace. E.g. The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, Silver Key, etc. There is a little more protagonist action there too (or room to fit it without breaking the story).

The dream cycle is some of my favorite Lovecraft. It has much more of a cohesive narrative (though still quite meandering and loopy) and not as racist as much of his other work (but still very racist). I'm not sure how well it'd translate onto the screen, as so much of the richness in it has to do with description of places not currently on the screen and exposition. So in that way, not unlike much of the rest of his work.

Mark Jenkins at NPR was significantly less than lukewarm about it. I'm personally not a fan of Cage. How would you say this version compares to The Curse? As to looking real: from the images, maybe they should have kept the violet a little more subtle? I'm unspeakably grateful that there's a movie not shot against a greenscreen for once, but then there's all that overwhelming purp everywhere.

There is one Lovecraft story that does feature some characters doing things, and is also truly awesome in its scope: The Dunwich Horror. In the hands of the right director, with a good cast, that story has potential. I’d love to see someone give it a shot.

As it happens, I got both volumes of Gou Tanabe's manga adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness for Christmas, and those were a visual feast befitting Lovecraft's cosmic horror, despite having to streamline the narrative and characters significantly. I know It/The Thing/Who Goes There? has been done to death by now, but I feel there's room for a film version of this story too. Admittedly you'd have to invent the characters for the names almost out of whole cloth because, like Peter said, Lovecraft didn't really do characters. Humans are in his stories only to suddenly witness the horror under-girding reality that they normally don't.

For me, The Mountains of Madness is Lovecraft's one real masterpiece. I've read everything he wrote many times, but that doesn't mean I think it's all good writing- I reserve a bookshelf for "so bad they're good" stuff like Lovecraft and A.E. Van Vogt and E.R. Eddison. Great stuff for drifting off to sleep- I can't get "actually" disturbed by it anymore.

But The Mountains of Madness is definitely on another level. It is much closer to true science fiction than most of his other stuff, and is much longer and much better written; a lot of the sciency jargon holds up fairly well and is believable for the time.

Mark Jenkins at NPR was significantly less than lukewarm about it. I'm personally not a fan of Cage. How would you say this version compares to The Curse? As to looking real: from the images, maybe they should have kept the violet a little more subtle? I'm unspeakably grateful that there's a movie not shot against a greenscreen for once, but then there's all that overwhelming purp everywhere.

There is one Lovecraft story that does feature some characters doing things, and is also truly awesome in its scope: The Dunwich Horror. In the hands of the right director, with a good cast, that story has potential. I’d love to see someone give it a shot.

As it happens, I got both volumes of Gou Tanabe's manga adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness for Christmas, and those were a visual feast befitting Lovecraft's cosmic horror, despite having to streamline the narrative and characters significantly. I know It/The Thing/Who Goes There? has been done to death by now, but I feel there's room for a film version of this story too. Admittedly you'd have to invent the characters for the names almost out of whole cloth because, like Peter said, Lovecraft didn't really do characters. Humans are in his stories only to suddenly witness the horror under-girding reality that they normally don't.

I think Lovecraft is better as a twist on Turn of the Screw (sorry for the pun), than when it is shown. Glimpses are more than enough, and hearing that's how it is handled here has put this on my watch list (without the wife, who doesn't do this kind of stuff).

Mark Jenkins at NPR was significantly less than lukewarm about it. I'm personally not a fan of Cage. How would you say this version compares to The Curse? As to looking real: from the images, maybe they should have kept the violet a little more subtle? I'm unspeakably grateful that there's a movie not shot against a greenscreen for once, but then there's all that overwhelming purp everywhere.

There is one Lovecraft story that does feature some characters doing things, and is also truly awesome in its scope: The Dunwich Horror. In the hands of the right director, with a good cast, that story has potential. I’d love to see someone give it a shot.

As it happens, I got both volumes of Gou Tanabe's manga adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness for Christmas, and those were a visual feast befitting Lovecraft's cosmic horror, despite having to streamline the narrative and characters significantly. I know It/The Thing/Who Goes There? has been done to death by now, but I feel there's room for a film version of this story too. Admittedly you'd have to invent the characters for the names almost out of whole cloth because, like Peter said, Lovecraft didn't really do characters. Humans are in his stories only to suddenly witness the horror under-girding reality that they normally don't.

While different mediums, it's a novella that takes about an hour to read, and most of that is drawn out to develop the atmosphere of creeping impending dread. There's really no character development. Odd that the manga couldn't fit it all in.

Mark Jenkins at NPR was significantly less than lukewarm about it. I'm personally not a fan of Cage. How would you say this version compares to The Curse? As to looking real: from the images, maybe they should have kept the violet a little more subtle? I'm unspeakably grateful that there's a movie not shot against a greenscreen for once, but then there's all that overwhelming purp everywhere.

There is one Lovecraft story that does feature some characters doing things, and is also truly awesome in its scope: The Dunwich Horror. In the hands of the right director, with a good cast, that story has potential. I’d love to see someone give it a shot.

As it happens, I got both volumes of Gou Tanabe's manga adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness for Christmas, and those were a visual feast befitting Lovecraft's cosmic horror, despite having to streamline the narrative and characters significantly. I know It/The Thing/Who Goes There? has been done to death by now, but I feel there's room for a film version of this story too. Admittedly you'd have to invent the characters for the names almost out of whole cloth because, like Peter said, Lovecraft didn't really do characters. Humans are in his stories only to suddenly witness the horror under-girding reality that they normally don't.

For me, The Mountains of Madness is Lovecraft's one real masterpiece. I've read everything he wrote many times, but that doesn't mean I think it's all good writing- I reserve a bookshelf for "so bad they're good" stuff like Lovecraft and A.E. Van Vogt and E.R. Eddison. Great stuff for drifting off to sleep- I can't get "actually" disturbed by it anymore.

But The Mountains of Madness is definitely on another level. It is much closer to true science fiction than most of his other stuff, and is much longer and much better written; a lot of the sciency jargon holds up fairly well and is believable for the time.

Have you read A Colder War by Charles Stross. Highly recommended if you like a bit of alternate history with your Lovecraft.

Lovecraft didn't actually write much other than hyperbolies. I think that's what makes it hard to adapt. The reader is required to fill in the gaps and scare themselves. Like madlibs but instead of ________ we get 'an unspeakable eldritch horror that mocks reality'. Those phrases are fun to read but they convey no actual information to me. And the stuff that is conveyed is kinda dull at least to me. Big mountains with big flying slugs living in lots of houses that look like... rocks. I like to imagine if that speech analyzer in the Foundation series were applied to Lovecraft we'd end up with a pamphlet.

But it also makes for a great starting point for someone making their own story in that framework. They fill in the blanks and finish the story.

Are we really faulting a movie for being unable to accurately present a color "unlike any of the normal spectrum [..] almost impossible to describe [..] only by analogy that they called it colour at all." ?

Problem is there is no such thing, that isn’t how waves work. It’s one reason why Lovecraft isn’t as smart as his fans like to think. Just like the ‘Horror of non-Euclidean geometry’ makes zero sense to anyone who actually understands what non-Euclidean even means (geometry on a sphere, you know like we deal with daily living on a globe). The guy was actually pretty scientifically and mathematically illiterate on top of being an insane racist.

Non Euclidean geometry doesn't have to be anything horrifying. But if you pushed the curvature high enough it absolutely would be terrifying. In fact that's a common horror trope - mazes which you cannot escape because they map onto themselves for example, or more subtly break our expectations - such as the examples documented in the set design of the Overlook hotel.

Maybe I have been desensitized by a healthy dose of horror since a child but I don’t exactly see how they would be terrifying or anything like that. Ooo I’m in an MC Escher drawing or at the equivalent of the Winchester house. Thing is whomever created it had to do so with some kind of logic or they themselves could not get around, just have to figure out how that logic applies. I think the more frightening thing would be the alien species that generally want to devour you.

Admittedly with today’s tech a lot of it is probably because of desensitization. I mean with computers and VR we can essentially put ourselves into the equivalent and explore such possibilities freely so the idea of it simply isn’t that foreign anymore. And there are plenty of ways to experience it from Disney rides that use optical illusions to Portal 2 mods that explore it more directly.

Lovecraft didn't actually write much other than hyperbolies. I think that's what makes it hard to adapt. The reader is required to fill in the gaps and scare themselves. Like madlibs but instead of ________ we get 'an unspeakable eldritch horror that mocks reality'. Those phrases are fun to read but they convey no actual information to me. And the stuff that is conveyed is kinda dull at least to me. Big mountains with big flying slugs living in lots of houses that look like... rocks.

But it also makes for a great starting point for someone making their own story in that framework. They fill in the blanks and finish the story.

I read most of his better known stuff twenty + years ago, and started working my way through Klinger's annotated compendium recently (recommended, btw). I agree he is best in small doses.